Log24

Friday, January 7, 2022

Blackboard Jungle Meets Asphalt Jungle

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:21 am

NYT:'datePublished':'2022-01-07T15:49:13.000Z'

"So we beat on, boats against the current."

Sunday, August 1, 2021

Blackboard Jungle Cruise

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:25 pm

See also Big Time in this  journal.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Blackboard Jungle Continues.

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm

From a post this morning  by Peter J. Cameron
in memory of John Horton Conway —

” This happened at a conference somewhere in North America. I was chairing the session at which he was to speak. When I got up to introduce him, his title had not yet been announced, and the stage had a blackboard on an easel. I said something like ‘The next speaker is John Conway, and no doubt he is going to tell us what he will talk about.’ John came onto the stage, went over to the easel, picked up the blackboard, and turned it over. On the other side were revealed five titles of talks. He said, ‘I am going to give one of these talks. I will count down to zero; you are to shout as loudly as you can the number of the talk you want to hear, and the chairman will judge which number is most popular.’ “
From Log24 on August 21, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014

Nox

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 1:00 AM

( A sequel to  Lux )

“By groping toward the light we are made to realize
how deep the darkness is around us.”

— Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy ,
Random House, 1973, page 118

Robin Williams and the Stages of Math

i)   shock & denial
ii)  anger
iii) bargaining
iv) depression
v)  acceptance

A related description of the process —

“You know how sometimes someone tells you a theorem,
and it’s obviously false, and you reach for one of the many
easy counterexamples only to realize that it’s not a
counterexample after all, then you reach for another one
and another one and find that they fail too, and you begin
to concede the possibility that the theorem might not
actually be false after all, and you feel your world start to
shift on its axis, and you think to yourself: ‘Why did no one
tell me this before?’ “

— Tom Leinster yesterday at The n-Category Café

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Blackboard Jungle Continues.

Filed under: G-Notes,General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 6:19 pm

From the 1955 film "Blackboard Jungle" —

From a trailer for the recent film version of A Wrinkle in Time

Detail of the phrase "quantum tesseract theorem":

From the 1962 book —

"There's something phoney
in the whole setup, Meg thought.
There is definitely something rotten
in the state of Camazotz."

Related mathematics from Koen Thas that some might call a
"quantum tesseract theorem" —

Some background —

Koen Thas, 'Unextendible Mututally Unbiased Bases' (2016)

See also posts tagged Dirac and Geometry. For more
background on finite  geometry, see a web page
at Thas's institution, Ghent University.

Friday, July 6, 2018

Blackboard Jungle — The Prequel

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:05 am

An image from the online New York Times  today —

Blackboard Jungle , 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

"Through the unknown, remembered gate . . . ."

T. S. Eliot, 1942

Monday, May 14, 2018

Blackboard Jungle continues . . .

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:42 pm

… from previous posts on Paul Lockhart.

For more on the new logo of the AMS as a symbol of
politically correct mediocrity, see a post of Jan. 10, 2018.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Blackboard Jungle Continues . . .

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:28 am

. . . With intolerable disrespect for the word …
In particular, the word "theorem."
 

See also "Quantum Tesseract Theorem" in this  journal.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Blackboard Jungle…

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Continues .

An older and wiser James Spader —

"Never underestimate the power of glitter."

Glitter by Josefine Lyche, as of diamond dust

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Blackboard Jungle Continues

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 am

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Blackboard Jungle Continues

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

Images from a post titled For Stephen King

IMAGE- Long division, yellow chalk, 12977 divided by 23

IMAGE- From a Lawrence Block mystery 'A Stab in the Dark'- 'There was a problem in long division worked out in yellow chalk on the blackboard' and 'You wanted a picture'-Lynn London

Related images —

"Pray for the grace of accuracy" — Robert Lowell

Friday, April 1, 2016

Blackboard Jungle Continues

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

See also the previous post and the usual suspects.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Blackboard Jungle Revisited

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 am

IMAGE- Blackboard from 'Blackboard Jungle'

Blackboard Jungle , 1955

"We are going to keep doing this
until we get it right." — June 15, 2007

"Her wall is filled with pictures,
she gets 'em one by one" — Chuck Berry

See too a more advanced geometry lesson
that also uses the diagram pictured above.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Continues

Other Times content — ("O Me!") —

Other non -Times content — ("O Life!") —

The author of the above pairing has suggested a topic she
seems ill-prepared to discuss — poetry and psychosis.

Her background is in grade-school education.
For one possible result when grade-school education
meets psychosis, see Log24 posts tagged Danvers.

For better-informed discussion of the relation of poetry  
to psychological states that are more normal, see (for instance)
Roberts Avens on James Hillman.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:07 am

Continued from Field of Dreams, Jan. 20, 2013.

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

That post mentioned the March 2011 AMS Notices ,
an issue on mathematics education.

In that issue was an interview with Abel Prize winner
John Tate done in Oslo on May 25, 2010, the day
he was awarded the prize. From the interview—

Research Contributions

Raussen and Skau: This brings us to the next
topic: Your Ph.D. thesis from 1950, when you were
twenty-five years old. It has been extensively cited
in the literature under the sobriquet “Tate’s thesis”.
Several mathematicians have described your thesis
as unsurpassable in conciseness and lucidity and as
representing a watershed in the study of number
fields. Could you tell us what was so novel and fruitful
in your thesis?

Tate: Well, first of all, it was not a new result, except
perhaps for some local aspects. The big global
theorem had been proved around 1920 by the
great German mathematician Erich Hecke, namely
​the fact that all L -functions of number fields,
abelian -functions, generalizations of Dirichlet’s
L -functions, have an analytic continuation
throughout the plane with a functional equation
of the expected type. In the course of proving
it Hecke saw that his proof even applied to a new
kind of L -function, the so-called L -functions with
Grössencharacter. Artin suggested to me that one
might prove Hecke’s theorem using abstract
harmonic analysis on what is now called the adele
ring, treating all places of the field equally, instead
of using classical Fourier analysis at the archimedian 
places and finite Fourier analysis with congruences 
at the p -adic places as Hecke had done. I think I did
a good job —it might even have been lucid and
concise!—but in a way it was just a wonderful 
exercise to carry out this idea. And it was also in the
air. So often there is a time in mathematics for 
something to be done. My thesis is an example. 
Iwasawa would have done it had I not.

[For a different perspective on the highlighted areas of
mathematics, see recent remarks by Edward Frenkel.]

"So often there is a time in mathematics for something to be done."

— John Tate in Oslo on May 25, 2010.

See also this journal on May 25, 2010, as well as
Galois Groups and Harmonic Analysis on Nov. 24, 2013.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:29 am

(Continued)

This morning's previous post concluded with
a 1938 tune for entertainer Edward Frenkel.

A more up-to-date musical offering:

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Blackboard Jungle…

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:00 pm

Continues.

IMAGE- Web page of math teacher murdered on Oct. 22, 2013

Detail —

IMAGE- Long division, yellow chalk, 12977 divided by 23

Discuss.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:30 am

(Continued)

Harrowing of Hell (Catholic Encyclopedia )

"This is the Old English and Middle English term
for the triumphant descent of Christ into hell (or Hades)
between the time of His Crucifixion and His Resurrection,
when, according to Christian belief, He brought salvation
to the souls held captive there since the beginning of the world."

Through the Blackboard (Feb. 25, 2010)—

Physicist accelerated against his blackboard in 'A Serious Man'

See also The Dreaming Jewels and Colorful Tale.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:00 am

From a review in the April 2013 issue of
Notices of the American Mathematical Society

"The author clearly is passionate about mathematics
as an art, as a creative process. In reading this book,
one can easily get the impression that mathematics
instruction should be more like an unfettered journey
into a jungle where an individual can make his or her
own way through that terrain."

From the book under review—

"Every morning you take your machete into the jungle
and explore and make observations, and every day
you fall more in love with the richness and splendor
of the place."

— Lockhart, Paul (2009-04-01). A Mathematician's Lament:
How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and
Imaginative Art Form 
(p. 92). Bellevue Literary Press.
Kindle Edition. 

Related material: Blackboard Jungle in this journal.

See also Galois Space and Solomon's Mines.

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Speak, Memory: 12 Panes or 16?

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:20 am

"Blackboard Jungle," 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

"Through the unknown, remembered gate . . . ."

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

A differently remembered gate —

Historical photo

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Record-Breaking Enrollment

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:50 pm

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Math Class Music

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:26 pm

See as well Blackboard Jungle  in this  journal.

Image-- Richard Kiley with record collection in 'Blackboard Jungle,' 1955

Thursday, August 5, 2021

The Dumbing-Down

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:45 am

"How old is  the 'Big Spider Beck' joke?"

From "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) —

Teacher:

– You see, music is based on mathematics,
and it's just that the next class … 
i
s a little more advanced.

Students:

– We're advanced, teach. 
– Two times two is four.
– Are  four. 

See also Damnation Morning  in this journal and . . .

Sunday, August 1, 2021

The Jazz Me Blues

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:19 pm

The title refers to a record played during math class
in the 1955 film "Blackboard Jungle."

Related posts:  Bix and Mira. See as well . . .

Saturday, October 19, 2019

John Tate Died…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:20 am

on some unspecified date,* according to
the University of Texas at Austin yesterday.

See also Tate in a Blackboard Jungle post 
from December 5, 2013.

* On October 16, 2019  (AMS Day),  according to 
the Harvard University department of mathematics.

Friday, October 4, 2019

Kiley Cornered

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:31 pm

Kiley in Blackboard Jungle , 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

From the previous post

"Prenons arbitrairement dans le tableau ci-dessus…."

Related material — "Ici vient M. Jordan."

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Bright Club

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

An image from "Blackboard Jungle," 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

"Through the unknown, remembered gate . . . ."

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Thursday, July 19, 2018

The Next Class

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:00 pm

From "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)

Teacher:

– You see, music is based on mathematics,
and it's just that the next class

:57:06

…is a little more advanced.

Students:

– We're advanced, teach. 

:57:09

– Two times two is four.
Are  four. 

Note the date of the above YouTube video.
From that same date, Friday, Jan. 13th, 2017 —

Monday, July 16, 2018

Greatly Exaggerated Report

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 1:21 pm

"The novel has a parallel narrative that eventually
converges with the main story."

— Wikipedia on a book by Foer's novelist brother
 

Public Squares

An image from the online New York Times 
on the date, July 6,
of  the above Atlantic  article —

An image from "Blackboard Jungle," 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

"Through the unknown, remembered gate . . . ."

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Enchantment Under the Sea*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:37 pm

The title is that of a fictional high school dance on November 12, 1955,
in the 1985 film “Back to the Future.”

A real  high school dance from that era —

“The Class History was reviewed by Scott Mohr.”

See also Scott Mohr in Log24 posts tagged Back to the Future.

“… the Prom carried out a Moonlight and Roses theme….”
Warren Times Mirror, Warren, PA, 2 June 1958, page 7 (above)

Related musical themes from a few years earlier —

See as well the 1955 film “Blackboard Jungle” in this journal.

*For some variations on the title theme, see Red October.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

The Square Inch Space: A Brief History

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:21 am

1955  ("Blackboard Jungle") —

1976 —

2009 —

2016 —

 Some small Galois spaces (the Cullinane models)

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Thanking the Academy

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:05 pm

Blackboard Jungle , 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

“Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation
of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was,
I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind,
nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery….”

— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“How strange the change from major to minor….”

— Cole Porter, “Every Time We Say Goodbye“

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Ominous Erotic Overture

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:44 pm

The title is from a New Yorker  review of

'Personal Shopper,' starring Kristen Stewart

"So put your glad rags on
 And join me, hon "

See also The Skeleton Twins  (2014)
and Blackboard Jungle  (1955).

Friday, June 9, 2017

Proprietary Code

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:14 am

    Quixote Vive!Terry Gilliam, June 4, 2017

Review of a post from March 7, 2017

"The supervisory read-only memory (SROM)
in question is a region of proprietary code
that runs when the chip starts up,
and in privileged mode."

— Elliot Williams at Hackaday , March 4, 2017,
     "Reading the Unreadable SROM"

From a reply to a comment on the above story —

"You are singing a very fearful and oppressive tune.
You ought to try to get it out of your head."

A perhaps less oppressive tune —

Related scene —

Richard Kiley in "Blackboard Jungle," 1955:

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Hackaday Story

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:48 pm

Cypress Spring 

according to Orphic myth

  " You will find to the left of the House of Hades
    a spring,
  And by the side thereof standing
    a white cypress.
  To this spring approach not near.
  But you shall find another,
    from the lake of Memory
  Cold water flowing forth, and there are
    guardians before it.
  Say, 'I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven;
  But my race is of Heaven alone.
    This you know yourselves.
  But I am parched with thirst and I perish.
    Give me quickly
  The cold water flowing forth
    from the lake of Memory.' "

"The supervisory read-only memory (SROM)
in question is a region of proprietary code
that runs when the chip starts up,
and in privileged mode."

— Elliot Williams at Hackaday , March 4, 2017,
     "Reading the Unreadable SROM"

From a reply to a comment on the above story —

"You are singing a very fearful and oppressive tune.
You ought to try to get it out of your head."

A perhaps less oppressive tune —

Related scene —

Richard Kiley in "Blackboard Jungle," 1955:

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

See also the Go chip in this journal.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Lyrics for a Cartoon Graveyard

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

"Try the grey stuff, it's delicious
Don't believe me? Ask the dishes"

— Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"

Related material —

Friday, April 1, 2016

Blackboard Jungle Continues

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 12:00 AM

See also the previous post and the usual suspects.

Happy birthday to Saoirse Ronan.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Bodies for Crosses

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:59 pm

The saying of poet Mary Karr that
"there is a body  on the cross in my church,"
together with the crosses of the previous post
suggests a synchronicity check of the
date  discussed in that post —

“Be serious, because
The stone may have contempt
For too-familiar hands”

— Adrienne Rich in “The Diamond Cutters” (1955)

Blackboard Jungle , 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

Space crosses, simple and not-so-simple

Monday, January 5, 2015

Gitterkrieg*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:00 pm
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 8:00 AM 

From a review in the April 2013 issue of
Notices of the American Mathematical Society

"The author clearly is passionate about mathematics
as an art, as a creative process. In reading this book,
one can easily get the impression that mathematics
instruction should be more like an unfettered journey
into a jungle where an individual can make his or her
own way through that terrain."

From the book under review—

"Every morning you take your machete into the jungle
and explore and make observations, and every day
you fall more in love with the richness and splendor 
of the place."

— Lockhart, Paul (2009-04-01). 
A Mathematician's Lament:
How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating
and Imaginative Art Form 
 (p. 92).
Bellevue Literary Press. Kindle Edition. 

Related material: Blackboard Jungle in this journal.

See also Galois Space and Solomon's Mines.

"I pondered deeply, then, over the
adventures of the jungle. And after
some work with a colored pencil
I succeeded in making my first drawing.
My Drawing Number One.
It looked something like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the
grown-ups, and asked them whether
the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: 'Why should
anyone be frightened by a hat?'"

The Little Prince

* For the title, see Plato Thanks the Academy (Jan. 3).

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Record-Breaking

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:35 pm

Blackboard Jungle , 1955 —

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

Today's online Harvard Crimson :

Harvard Crimson, 9/11/2014: 'CS50 Logs Record-Breaking Enrollment Numbers,' by Meg P. Bernhard, Crimson Staff Writer

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Emperor

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“Paradigm Talent Agency are supporting with casting.

Emperor  is described as a look at a debauched world
of wealth, sex, manipulation and treason.”

The Hollywood Reporter : “Cannes: Adrien Brody
to play Charles V in Lee Tamahori‘s ‘Emperor,'”
2:54 AM PST May 19, 2014, by Scott Roxborough

Related material from Santa Cruz, California:

On or about or between 11/22/2013 and 11/24/2013….

Related material from this journal:

Fiction,” a post of St. Cecilia’s Day, 11/22/2013.

See, too, yesterday’s noon post “Nowhere” and
the April 27-28, 2013, posts tagged Around the Clock.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Dark Sarcasm

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:09 pm

From Sidney Poitier, in honor of  the late Paul Mazursky:

Masonic coda:

“All in all…” — Pink Floyd

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Entartete Kunst

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 pm

The title refers to a New York Times  story about
an art exhibition that opened today.

This evening’s NY Lottery numbers:  016 and 2858.

Pictures from these links:

016  (Blackboard Jungle , 1955) —

IMAGE- Blackboard from 'Blackboard Jungle'


2858
 (number of a Log24 post, 2007) —

Sunday, December 22, 2013

The Bronfman Catechism

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:21 am

Meanwhile

Log24 on Sunday, October 5, 2008

Theologian James Edwin Loder:

“In a game of chess, the knight’s move is unique because it alone goes around corners. In this way, it combines the continuity of a set sequence with the discontinuity of an unpredictable turn in the middle. This meaningful combination of continuity and discontinuity in an otherwise linear set of possibilities has led some to refer to the creative act of discovery in any field of research as a ‘knight’s move’ in intelligence.”

Related material:

Terence McKenna:

“Schizophrenia is not a psychological disorder peculiar to human beings. Schizophrenia is not a disease at all but rather a localized traveling discontinuity of the space time matrix itself. It is like a travelling whirl-wind of radical understanding that haunts time. It haunts time in the same way that Alfred North Whitehead said that the color dove grey ‘haunts time like a ghost.’”

Anonymous author:

“‘Knight’s move thinking’ is a psychiatric term describing a thought disorder where in speech the usual logical sequence of ideas is lost, the sufferer jumping from one idea to another with no apparent connection. It is most commonly found in schizophrenia.”

Related journalism

IMAGE- Scene from a blackboard jungle

"What's the 'S'  stand for?" — Amy Adams

Saturday, December 14, 2013

American Beauty

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

Or: Blackboard Jungle, Continued

  Click image for
  a related story.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Being There

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:16 pm

Or: The Naked Blackboard Jungle

"…it would be quite a long walk
for him if he had to walk straight across."

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/070831-Ant1.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Swiftly Mrs. Who brought her hands… together.

"Now, you see," Mrs. Whatsit said,
"he would be  there, without that long trip.
That is how we travel."

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/070831-Ant2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

– A Wrinkle in Time 
Chapter 5, "The Tesseract"

Related material: Machete Math and

Starring the late Eleanor Parker as Swiftly Mrs. Who.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Noon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Relevant material:

Thursday, October 24, 2013

For Stephen King

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:26 pm

(Continued)

Wikipedia —

A Blackboard Jungle for Stephen King

"Danvers is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, 
United States, located on the Danvers River near the
northeastern coast of Massachusetts. Originally known
as Salem Village, the town is most widely known for its
association with the 1692 Salem witch trials. It is also
known for the Danvers State Hospital, one of the state's
19th-century psychiatric hospitals, which was located here." 

"The summer's gone and all the roses fallin' "

IMAGE- Long division, yellow chalk, 12977 divided by 23

IMAGE- From a Lawrence Block mystery 'A Stab in the Dark'- 'There was a problem in long division worked out in yellow chalk on the blackboard.'

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Steam

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:00 pm

For Jack and Jill.

The above motivational video is from the web page of a middle school
math teacher who was shot to death yesterday morning.

Related journalism —

IMAGE- Scene from a blackboard jungle

See also "S in a Diamond" (here, October 2013)
and "Superman Comes to the Supermarket,"
by Norman Mailer (Esquire , November 1960).

In a recent film, Amy Adams asked Superman,
"What's the S stand for?"

One possible answer, in light of Stephen King's
recent sequel to The Shining  and of
the motivational video above—

Steam.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Art History

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Quoted in the March 13 post Blackboard Jungle:

"Every morning you take your machete into the jungle
and explore and make observations, and every day
you fall more in love with the richness and splendor
of the place."

— Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician's Lament

More from Lockhart's jungle—

Mathematical objects, even if initially inspired by some aspect of reality (e.g., piles of rocks, the disc of the moon), are still nothing more than figments of our imagination.

Not only that, but they are created by us and are endowed by us with certain characteristics; that is, they are what we ask them to be….

… in Mathematical Reality, because it is an imaginary place, I actually can have pretty much whatever I want….

The point is that there is no reality to any of this, so there are no rules or restrictions other than the ones we care to impose…. Make up anything you want, so long as it isn’t boring. Of course this is a matter of taste, and tastes change and evolve. Welcome to art history!

— Lockhart, Paul (2009-04-01). A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form  (pp. 100-104). Bellevue Literary Press. Kindle Edition. 

Related material in this journal: Bellevue and Wechsler.

See also Gombrich in this journal and in the following:

Related material (Click for some background.) —

From a novel by Chinua Achebe

Sunday, January 20, 2013

In the Details

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Part I:  Synthesis

Part II:  Iconic Symbols

IMAGE- Blackboard from 'Blackboard Jungle'

Blackboard Jungle , 1955

Part III:  Euclid vs. Galois

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Annals of Symbolism

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:02 pm

A phrase from last night's post— "God's empty chair."

For related material from this journal, see The Empty Chair.

A related scene from mathematics education (the theme of the new March 2011 AMS Notices )—

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

"Plato acknowledges how khora  challenges our normal categories
 of rational understanding. He suggests that we might best approach it
 through a kind of dream  consciousness."

  –Richard Kearney, quoted here Sunday afternoon

"You make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream."

Song at Sunday night's Grammy awards

"Put your glad rags on and join me, hon…"

Road House

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:02 am

A 1948 classic

Again, this couldn't happen again.
This is that "once in a lifetime,"
this is the thrill divine.

The great 1949 days (according to Jack Kerouac)—

IMAGE-- Scene from 'Blackboard Jungle,' 1955

On the Road

Shearing began to play his chords; they rolled out of the piano in great rich showers, you'd think the man wouldn't have time to line them up. They rolled and rolled like the sea. Folks yelled for him to "Go!" Dean was sweating; the sweat poured down his collar. "There he is! That's him! Old God! Old God Shearing! Yes! Yes! Yes!" And Shearing was conscious of the madman behind him, he could hear every one of Dean's gasps and imprecations, he could sense it though he couldn't see. "That's right!" Dean said. "Yes!" Shearing smiled; he rocked. Shearing rose from the piano, dripping with sweat; these were his great 1949 days before he became cool and commercial. When he was gone Dean pointed to the empty piano seat. "God's empty chair," he said.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Simplify (continued)

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"Plato acknowledges how khora  challenges our normal categories
 of rational understanding. He suggests that we might best approach it
 through a kind of dream  consciousness."
  —Richard Kearney, quoted here yesterday afternoon

"You make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream."
 — Song at last night's Grammy awards

Image-- Richard Kiley with record collection in 'Blackboard Jungle,' 1955

Richard Kiley in "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)
Note the directive on the blackboard.

Quoted here last year on this date

Alexandre Borovik's Mathematics Under the Microscope  (American Mathematical Society, 2010)—

"Once I mentioned to Gelfand that I read his Functions and Graphs ; in response, he rather sceptically asked me what I had learned from the book. He was delighted to hear my answer: 'The general principle of always looking at the simplest possible example.'….

So, let us look at the principle in more detail:

Always test a mathematical theory on the simplest possible example…

This is a banality, of course. Everyone knows it; therefore, almost no one follows it."

Related material— Geometry Simplified and A Simple Reflection Group of Order 168.

"Great indeed is the riddle of the universe.
 Beautiful indeed is the source of truth."

– Shing-Tung Yau, Chairman,
Department of Mathematics, Harvard University

"Always keep a diamond in your mind."

King Solomon at the Paradiso

IMAGE-- Imaginary movie poster- 'The Galois Connection'- from stoneship.org

Image from stoneship.org

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Simplify.

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:20 pm

Image-- Richard Kiley with record collection in 'Blackboard Jungle,' 1955

Richard Kiley in "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Today’s Sermon —

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

Simplify.

Image-- Richard Kiley with record collection in 'Blackboard Jungle,' 1955

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